


This Is Your Life

by malapropism



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: But Also: Meta-Hangover, Hangover, M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 11:04:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8665189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/pseuds/malapropism
Summary: Sirius wakes up with a royal fucking hangover.Or, well. Something like that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this "story" on my computer for over a year and decided to finally unleash it. The sense of humor here is irreverent at best, but really probably dubious. **In terms of content warnings, there are mentions of:** hungover nausea, vomiting, blackout-level inebriation, methods of suicide/self-harm, (imagined) homophobia/homophobic violence, and really only a very small amount of sexual content. It's all delivered in sort of an attempt at black comedy. There's a lot of swearing and one homophobic slur.
> 
> Oh, and it's in the second person. Sorry about that.

Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

You wake up under proper fucking duress. The air is sludge in your mouth and you can barely breathe. It’s entirely likely that you are in fact drowning in your own sweat and/or vomit and/or general filth, which is just unfair, because you’re far too good-looking to go out like that. It’s just so undignified. You won’t allow it. You’re going to do something about it. Right after you just rest your eyes, just for a…

You wake up again and you feel a little more human but also being human hurts. Like, a lot. Why has no one ever told you this. There is this pain in the vicinity of your brain, it’s like a sledgehammer pounding against your head, no wait, it’s a sledgehammer to a scalpel to the head, a great pounding force driving a tiny razor sharp blade further and further into your eardrum, your poor eardrum, what did it ever do to deserve this. Just breathing rattles your pathetic skeleton like a jackhammer on concrete and you can barely remember your own goddamn name. It starts with a _S_ , and there’s a joke somewhere. Somewhere. Probably at the bottom of a bottle, or five, or lucky number thirteen, judging by the rotting moss on your tongue and the demented chorus of dehydrated molecules sounding off in your brain, your poor precious brain, you used to be really quite brilliant, you were so promising in your youth, you used to think such great big thoughts, such lovely thoughts. You’re entirely off thinking now, of course, because God that hurts, how do you make it stop, maybe if you could…

The third time, it sticks. Unfortunately. A sunbeam lands directly on your eyelids, which are apparently highly flammable, as they are now on fire. Your whole head is on fire. Your stomach simultaneously growls ( _hungry_ ) and tries to forcibly eject itself from your throat ( _vomit_ ) and tragically the latter impulse wins out. You must retain some small shred of dignity so you lurch out of bed - well, not precisely _bed_ , but rather a pile of shredded t-shirts and empty crisps packages in which you’ve seemingly made some sort of nest for yourself, you cunning dog you - and take your very first steps. You are not entirely sure if you have ever walked before. 

You are fairly certain that your body is 95% alcohol. You’re like some drunken jellyfish. Your bones wobble and you sort of crash into the wall, sliding down it like a dazed bird on a clean window, but eventually you get the gist of forward motion. The trick is to stay mostly upright. You shuffle towards the washroom and proceed to empty your guts out into the first available receptacle, which happens to be the sink. Oops. It tastes like acid and whisky and kebabs and regret, not necessarily in that order, not necessarily in any order at all. You melt onto the floor and contemplate taking up residence on the black tile, because it’s cool on your forehead and it seems advisable to stay in the general proximity of the toilet basin, as your stomach has lodged itself in your esophagus and doesn’t seem particularly interested in rejoining your intestinal track any time soon.

It’s dreadfully boring down there, though, so eventually you get up. It has either been just shy of twenty minutes or it’s possibly been thirty-two years and you are now forty-five (you lie about your age, natch) and married to some old hag, and you’ve got two kids and job at a local bank, and you’re contemplating suicide by handgun just to liven things up a bit. Bang, bang.

When you (finally) get back to your room, you fall like a log ( _timber!_ ) onto the bed - for you are far too lovely to sleep on the crisps-nest, you deserve so much more from this cruel world - and the comforter is so clean and white and soft and - and - somehow the bed has gone and sprouted a knee, how peculiar, and an elbow or three, along with several _very_ hard shins, and really that’s more shins than a bed has any right to have, and also, the bed is shrieking. Which does seem a little odd, now that you mention it.

“Spleen, mine, fuck you, arsehole,” the bed said, a little incoherently, even for an inanimate object. (Also, do beds even have spleens?)

“No,” you reply in vain, or perhaps vainly. You can never remember which one you mean, and they do apparently mean different things. Although on any given day, you could probably use them interchangeably, on account of your being both exceedingly conceited and entirely ineffectual. So to be safe, let’s just go with both.

You attempt to burrow into the bed’s surprisingly squishy stomach. Who knew that four-poster beds had such lovely, soft bellies.

“Black, I-swear-to-God, how many times have I told you. No jumping on me unless you’re wearing the French maid’s outfit and you’re bringing me my third Bloody Mary.” 

Now that the bed is forming full sentences, you realize that it does sound a teensy bit like your best-friend-cum-flatmate-cum-furtive-sexual-fantasy, who is decidedly not an anthropomorphized piece of furniture.

This is the point in the story where you’re supposed to suddenly remember the events of last night. If this were a novel and you were its protagonist, the sound of  the bed’s _James’_ voice would have brought about instantaneous clarity (and sobriety). But because this is not a novel, because this is just your life and you’re a twenty-year-old university dropout with a penchant for whisky (read: burgeoning substance abuse problem) and a best friend who’s apparently forgotten that he has his own damn room on the other side of that sodding wall, you can’t remember anything about last night. No artful recollections of the flickering streetlamp or the pulsating club beats, no blurry snapshot of a key scrabbling in its lock, no hazy sidelong glances or charmingly inept fumblings. You've got nothing. 

Also, you smell. If this were a novel, you almost certainly wouldn’t smell like a bin liner.

If this were a _proper_ story, the two of you would have woken up in a tangled embrace, full of sweet tentative questions and newly discovered (?) longing. You would look into each other’s entirely un-bleary eyes and your breath would be minty-fresh. The night before would flit across the screen in a series of sensual stills: the curve of his lower lip, his skin shivering under your fingertips, smoke curling off a shared cigarette, his grin daring you to lean in for a kiss. You might remember accepting the dare and winning, or possibly chickening out at the very last second. (Could go either way, knowing you. A coin toss, really.)

Regardless, you would wake with uncertainty on your tongue - wondering if it had all been some mad dream - and then he’d roll over, and open his eyes, smile, and you’d know.

Or he’d roll over, and open his eyes, see you, and knock out your teeth.

 

If this were the sort of film that gets made about people like you, it would likely end with you making some kind of doomed declaration to the decidedly heterosexual object of your misguided affections, and then you’d get called a faggot and go home to slit your wrists or whatever, all while some truly dreadful acoustic guitar plays in the background. Your untimely demise would end up like, spurring some positively useless legislation and loads of people would cry about your sad pathetic life because it reminded them of how bad their own sad pathetic lives had or could been or be. In this sort of story, you’ve got to really be in love with the straight fucker, and it’s obviously got to be unrequited, and even better yet, it should ruin your entire life, of course. It can’t just be mutually managed lust or natural schoolboy curiosity or even a drunken slip of your tongue into his mouth. No, if you want to be in the movies, you’ve got to be profoundly, miserably in love with him. He’s the great love of your nasty, brutish and short life.

And by the by, you’re not the protagonist of this here cinematic triumph. That's probably your father, as he’s on a Journey of Acceptance, which makes for a very awards-y sort of role for some middle-aged has-been, and while he (your dad) (well not your dad, your movie dad) was a total dick to you when you were, you know, not-dead, he’s gotten super into Commemorating Your Memory and Preserving Your Legacy. Your death has to mean something, and it can’t just mean that some people are homophobic bastards, even though they totally are. But the point is, you’re not the protagonist and as a matter of fact, you die in first act. Sorry.

In retrospect maybe you should just skip the whole ordeal and head straight for the bridge and chuck yourself right off. If you’re going to be typecast for tragedy, you might as well get straight to the denouement. Pun intended.

(Although, if this was the sort of… _film_ that you watch late at night with the headphones in and your hand down your pants, there’d be a little less declaring of love or whatever and a lot more dick. Now that’s the ticket.)

The point is, if this were the kind of story that someone would pay good money for, you’d be remembering something right about now. You’d know why your best mate has totally colonized your big beautiful bed (did you two…) and you’d know what the hell’s left you with the hangover of the decade (that was probably all on you, mate), and most crucially, you’d know how you were supposed to act in the cold sober-ish light of day, because you’d have a role to play and a script to follow and there’d be a point to this damn thing.

But this is real life, and it’s your life, and there’s absolutely no money in it, thanks to Mummy Dearest and Daddy Deadbeat, so you’ve got no idea what’s going on. 

Also, James is like, so not straight. You’re still (probably? what in god’s name happened last night, Jesuschristalmighty) not getting any, but he’s totally a card-carrying queer. So it could happen and maybe it did. In your (wet) dreams. 

Anyways.

 

Considering all of this and the state of your poor head, the best you can do is indignantly mutter, “If you weren’t in my bed then I wouldn’t have to jump on you, wanker,” as you wriggle deeper into the tangle of blankets and limbs that is apparently James Potter (and bed). 

It’s not particularly cinematic but whatever. You were never going to make it as a blockbuster. You’re just hoping it’s more Dogme 95 than mumblecore, because _ugh_. Gross.

Of course, it’s not a film at all, it’s your bloody life. And because you’re you, and James is James, and this is it, look at your life, look at your choices, he says:

“This is my bed, you tosser.”


End file.
